Avengers star Cobie Smulders has incredible reaction to discovering she’s a lesbian icon
“This is news to me,” the actor admitted, surprised but gleeful at the newfound status.
Words: Emily Maskell; pictures: TikTok @/@itsshannonburns
Avengers and L Word actor Cobie Smulders had no idea she was a queer icon.
The 40-year-old actor was on the red carpet when an iHeart Radio reporter asked if she was aware of her queer icon status, particularly with lesbians.
Wide-eyed and shocked, Smulders exclaimed: “No. Am I? Really?”
@itsshannonburns Cobie Smulders, our queer icon🫡 #cobiesmulders #tiff2022 #tiff ♬ Comical, light and cute 8-beat jazz – Hanadayama Music Lab
With a wide grin, she admitted: “this is news to me.”
“I do get a lot of ‘so Maria, Helen, Black Widow. What’s the story there?’ I’m like ‘I don’t know you guys, let’s do it.’”
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Smulders has played S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill in the likes of The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home.
Hill met Helen Cho (played by Claudia Kim) at the latter’s brand new laboratory where she tended to the Avengers’ injuries.
The Marvel franchise has been pushing for LGBTQ+ representation in recent years, earlier this month it was announced a gay Spider-Man origin story is in the works.
Smulders also appeared in the L word, a popular drama charting a group of lesbian and bisexual women in West Hollywood, an experience she said was “very cool.”
She suggested her L Word appearance, as a recurring role on the show as Leigh Ostin, may be the root of her newfound queer icon status.
Previously, Smulders has spoken about the need and desire for queer representation in media.
“Streaming is all about representation and pushing the bar, but you don’t see it much on network,” she said, speaking to The Cut in 2019 about the American crime drama Stumptown.
“Someone in middle America can just turn on this show on for free,” she continued. “And that was one of the things where I was like, ‘Hey, ABC. Are you gonna be brave enough to put a bisexual woman on television, and like, make it a real thing?’ And they were.”
Smulders was in Toronto to promote the new eight-part freevee series High School, a coming of age tale about two twins’ journey of self-discovery, in which she stars as the twins’ mother opposite Kyle Bornheimer.
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